Practicum p.1
COUN 555 : Practicum - Mental Health Counseling
Spring 200 9
Instructor: Jeff L. Cochran, Associate Professor in Educational Psychology & Counseling
Office: 439 Claxton Office Phone: 974-4178
Email:
Course Purpose & Overview
This course provides opportunities to integrate your learning so far from your counseling program and for many of you provides an initial counseling experience. The primary goals are for you to learn to listen therapeutically, provide the core conditions of counseling as well as additional client care, develop self-awareness related to these roles, and integrate this self-awareness and basic skills into the person you are becoming as counselor.
Your willingness to gain the self-awareness, self-development and skills necessary to be an effective counselor is an important part of this course. Therefore, the course emphasizes counselor self-awareness and self-development, while focusing on your ability to interact effectively in therapeutic relationships.
You will learn from and grow through each others’ experiences, as well as your individual experiences. As you share your experiences, thoughts and reactions with your peers as well as your instructor, you will also benefit from the group’s combined experience. Your openness to learning, sharing your experiences, sharing your thoughts and feelings, and joining your peers in giving and receiving feedback will be required for your learning and that of your peers.
Of course, a significant part of your learning through this course comes from your client service. Your care and service to your clients should be your first priority. Dedicate yourself to being the very best counselor you can be for your clients at this time. Be self-reflective and open to learning and sharing, and your skill development will follow.
Specific Course Objectives Include:
1. Demonstrate effective counseling by developing skills in which you…
¨ develop & maintain therapeutic relationships
¨ accurately listen/attend and demonstrate your understanding to your clients
¨ experience and express genuine, accurate, deep empathy, and deeply felt unconditional positive regard
¨ understand and use interpersonal counseling process to facilitate client change
¨ facilitate client self-awareness, self-responsibility and personal growth
¨ understand clients in the key contexts of their lives (current situations, families, cultures)
¨ explain and assist individual clients’ understandings of how they may use counseling/a therapeutic relationship
¨ apply understanding of legal and ethical considerations in counseling practice
¨ maintain adequate clinical counseling records
¨ develop the necessary self-awareness (e. g., personal issues, attitudes and behaviors based on such factors as race/ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation) to be effective as a beginning counselor
¨ develop sensitivity to diversity issues (e. g., race/ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation) that impact your clients and counseling relationships
¨ guide all your counselor actions with intent to form therapeutic relationships that emphasize genuine, deep empathy and unconditional positive regard, while remembering that developing yourself to provide effective counseling relationships includes maintaining an openness to the full range of reasonable counselor actions
¨ balance the molding of yourself into the qualities of most effective counselors while also making the work you do as a counselor an expression of who you are as a person.
2. Demonstrate effective use of supervision by developing your ability to…
¨ understand the supervisory process
¨ give and receive constructive feedback
¨ be open to hearing feedback from peers, supervisor, and instructor
¨ thoughtfully implement feedback received from peers, supervisor, and instructor
¨ openly share your experiences, thoughts, and feelings as a beginning counselor
¨ be prepared for both individual and group supervision
¨ respectfully assert yourself and your views in group and individual supervision
3. Demonstrate the following other skills by you’re ability to…
¨ understand, critique, and apply assigned readings about counseling
¨ write and present thoughts and beliefs important to understanding and explaining what you do and why, as a counselor
¨ apply graduate level thinking, presenting, and writing skills
¨ contemplate and regulate yourself regarding your work as counselor
¨ communicate a positive and motivating view of counseling to potential clients
¨ deliver useful presentations on counseling services or related topics
¨ and use counseling experience, supervision, thought, writing and other course activities to progress toward developing your therapeutic confidence
For accreditation standards met fully or partially by this course, see Appendix A
Text
Cochran, J. L, & Cochran, N. H. (2006). The heart of counseling: A guide to developing
therapeutic relationships. Belmont, CA: Thomson.
Additional readings as assigned and needed by supervision group or individual students for case application and individual development.
Requirements for Clinical and Related Work
Professionalism. We expect that the following goes without saying, but just to be absolutely clear, professionalism is required in every way throughout your practicum. While you are a “practicum student” you are also beginning to provide the services of a “professional counselor.” So consistent professionalism is required, including such things as appropriate dress, respectfulness of workplace hierarchies, supervisors, colleagues and other professionals, and of course clients.
Insurance. All students must have and show proof of professional liability insurance.
Professional Disclosure/ Informed Consent . You may use the sample Informed Consent & Permission to Tape forms found in the MHC Practicum Manual; or if those forms seem inappropriate for your clients & work setting, create and obtain approval to use more fitting forms; of if those forms are completely redundant with agency forms, substitute and use the agency forms. Any such forms must be approved by your instructor and site supervisor.
Recording Sessions . In order to benefit from high quality supervision, you will need to record significant portions of your work. If possible, record every meeting with every client. As a minimum, have one tape per week prepared for use in individual/triadic and small group supervision each week, beginning February 4 or before, if possible, and definitely by February 11. You may substitute sessions with peers if absolutely necessary. You may use your discretion regarding sessions for which recording is not appropriate and be absolutely sure your instructor concurs with your discretion.
You must ensure that you have good quality recording abilities. Videotape as many of your sessions as possible. One can learn much more from the review of video-audio recordings than from audio only. Be sure to obtain good quality recorder, microphone, & tapes. It will be worth your while. Hard to hear/see tapes are difficult to learn from. It is a great disappointment to have a session for which review could be critical to your learning that is impossible to hear in supervision. Poor quality recordings could hinder your ability to receive adequate supervision & therefore to progress.
Handling, Maintaining, & Caring for Your Tapes. At the end of the semester, erase or destroy all counseling recordings . Be very careful in protecting, then destr oying your tapes . If, by some accident, a client’s tape fell into others’ possession, it would be a breach of our commitment to confidentiality and could be very hurtful to the client.
You should keep a s ignificant set of session recordings until the end of the semester (label tapes with the session dates, client's initials and numbers of sessions). Select some of your best, worst, and typical tapes to keep until the end of the semester. These tapes will be useful for your self-review and reflection, recognition of progress, session transcript, client change essay, and other papers. I may also ask to review a number of tapes to determine your progress through the semester.
Supervision. The class meetings will consist of group supervision. In the first 2-3 weeks we will spend a significant portion of our time in preparatory skill review. After those meetings, our focus will be discussion of your service to clients and tape supervision. In addition, each of you will receive individual or triadic supervision for one hour per week.
You are to review your taped sessions prior to supervision whenever possible & reasonable. “Review” means having listened to or watched the tape, contemplating your work, deciding which part you particularly want your supervisor to review, and considering the issues you most want to discuss in supervision. Then, you are to come to individual/triadic and group supervision each week with a tape wound to a segment that you would like reviewed. You may select segments of which you are particularly pleased, concerned, or somewhere in between. An understandable reason for not pre-reviewing your tape before individual or group supervision would be if you have just finished a session shortly before supervision over which you have strong feelings and would like feedback. However, complete your supervision preparation as often as possible because this time of contemplation is an important part of your learning even if you do not have time to review all of the segments in supervision.
Professional Record Keeping. Many of your settings will have specific requirements for record keeping which must be met in professional and timely manners. Because many of your settings as practicum students are unique, some of your settings may not have specific case note requirements and procedures. In that case you must establish your own procedures for record keeping. Standard case note guidance is provided in your practicum manual. Your instructors, as well as your site-supervisors can help you maintain adequate professional records of your work. Case notes must be kept for each client and added to after each session. Case notes must be kept locked or secure at all times.
Counseling. Strive for breadth and depth in your counseling experiences and relationships. Strive to serve enough different clients to experience significant variation and to provide relatively long term care (most of the semester) for at least some your clients. Also, the services you provide must include group work.
Course Requirements and Expectations
Class Participation. Knowledge, wisdom, and skills as counselor are best developed in an interactive environment. Active participation in class discussions, exercises, and supervision, as well as a willingness to give and receive constructive feedback are necessary components of your development through this class. Additionally, you will need to come to class prepared to discuss readings.
During group supervision meetings, be prepared to play a 10-12 minute segment of your recent work for discussion and feedback. In preparation for group or individual supervision, you will have already reviewed the session and set the tape to play the segment you would like your supervisor or peers to hear. An occasionally understandable reason for not pre-reviewing your tape before individual or group supervision would be if you have just finished a session shortly before supervision over which you have strong feelings and would like feedback. Other than that, each graduate counselor trainee should come to class with a tape ready to use in supervision each week.
Attendance & Timeliness. If it becomes absolutely necessary for you to miss a class, please contact me before class if possible, or as soon after as possible. Please do not be late for class. Your lateness may cause you to miss important information and slow the work of the group. Finally, if you miss a part of any class, please get any handouts and information you missed from classmates, as it is difficult for me to keep track of missed items.
Chapter Reading Reactions. Chapter readings in The Heart of Counseling are assigned for specific dates and are planned for class discussion on those dates. Come to class ready to discuss the chapters with questions and comments related to the chapters and your current work/development. It may help you to write your questions and comments for you to use in the discussion. See Calendar for specific reading discussion dates. Your written reactions are due on each discussion date.
Please limit yourself to two typed, double-spaced, pages, with 12-point font and normal margins for each reading reaction. You will have to limit yourself to your top few reactions to each reading. You will likely need to use more than one draft, paring down your words and focusing your reaction with each draft in order to write a meaningful reaction in the short space allowed. Your reactions are necessarily personal and you are encouraged to apply all that you read to your self as well as skill development.
Log Maintenance and Service Hour Targets. Using the formats provided in practicum manual, record your time usage on a regular basis, provide a summary report to your instructor on a weekly basis, and take care that your service time exceeds the required amounts of total and direct service hours (100+ total hours, with at least 40 being direct service – individual and small group counseling, mental health skill training, consultation directly on behalf of clients).
First time log summaries are due February 4 and each week after.
Journal Summary. You are required to make journal entries weekly addressing each of the items bulleted below. Then summarize your journal content at three points in the semester (you should also keep your weekly entries in an organized format in case additional documentation is needed at any time). Please review the items bulleted below to make sure that you address them in your weekly journal and that you address them in your journal summary.
Part A:
· Rate and explain your rating of your therapeutic confidence on a scale of 1-10 at the beginning of the semester, mid-point, and end (you should rate and explain your therapeutic confidence in each weekly entry). Your explanation of your ratings should include what your numeric ratings meant to you, and actions or events that you believe contributed most to your level of therapeutic confidence and to changes in your level of therapeutic confidence.
· Reflect and comment on your counseling skills (i.e., several skills or ways of being that you are doing well and one that you see that you most need to improve).
· Reflect and comment on your personal reactions to clients and counseling situations.
· Reflect and comment on your overall practicum experience.
· In your summary, address how your thoughts on your skills, on supervision, on your overall experience, and how your reactions to clients and counseling reactions have changed.
Part B:
· Apply the Integrative Processing Model (IPM) to at least one counseling or related practicum situation weekly – write out/type into your journal each of the steps in this process applied to the counseling situation. A handout or electronic version of the model will be provided.
· For each journal summary, include two examples from these weekly entries.